V. I. Lenin

Golos Sotsial-Demokrataand Cherevanin{2}

Published:ProletaryNo. 50, November 28 (December 11), 1909.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 16,

      pages103-105.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

ComradeCherevanin is the prototype and model of the
confirmed liquidator among the Mensheviks. lie has made this perfectly
clear in his well-known bookThe Proletariat, etc. Liquidationism
is so strongly pronounced in this book that the well-known Dutch woman
writer and Marxist, Roland-Holst, the author of the preface to the German
translation, could not refrain from expressing her protest against the
distortion of Marxism and its replacement by revisionism.At that
timethe editorial board ofGolos Sotsial-Demokrataprinted a
repudiation of Cherevanin inVorwärts, declaring that leading
Mensheviks do not agree with him.Proletarypointed out the
hypocrisy of such a repudiation, since it wasnotreprinted inGolosand was not accompanied by a systematic explanation of
Cherevanin’s “mistakes” in the Russian

				press.{1}Is not this exactly how bourgeois ministers behave, beginning with Stolypin
and ending with Briand: by making reservations, corrections, by repudiating
an, over-zealous kindred-spirit and over-ardent supporter, and by
continuing the old line under this cover?

GolosNo. 16-17 publishes a letter from Cherevanin to the
editors with its comment.Proletaryis accused of “slander”
because we allegedly “concealed” from the public that Cherevanin himself
“corrected the mistake” in his book:The Contemporary Situation and
the Possible Future(Moscow, 1908).

Weshall show our readers once againwhat are the methodsof
the Golosists, and what it means when they accuseProletaryof
“slandering” them as liquidators.

Weshall limit ourselves to a few quotations from Cherevanin’s above-mentioned
new book. Page 173: “In general I do not retract anything of the analysis which
I gave in my book:The Proletariat in the Revolution. The proletariat
and the Social-Democrats have unquestionably made a number of mistakes which
were bound to impede the victory of the revolution,evenif this victory had
been possible[Cherevanin’s italics]. But now the question, must be asked
whether this victory was really possible and whether the mistakes of the
proletariat and the Social-Democratic Party were the only causes of the defeat
of the revolution. The question itself suggests the answer. The defeat of the
revolution is so pro found and the reign of the reaction, for the next few years
at least, is so secure that it would be quite impossible to refer the causes of
this to any mistakes of the proletariat. Here, evidently, it is a question not
of mistakes but of deeper causes.”

There,according toGolos, you have Cherevanin’s “correction of the
mistake”! Cherevanin does not retract his “analysis”, butdeepensit, adding quite a number of new gems (such as the statistical definition of the
“forces of revolution” asone quarterof the total
population, 21.5%-28%; we shall discuss this gem another time!). To the thesis
that the revolutionary proletariat made mistakes, Cherevanin adds: the
revolution did not have the “possible” support (p. 197, Cherevanin’s
italics) of over one quarter of the population—and the Golosists call this a
“correction” and loudly accuseProletaryof slander.

Page176: “Let us imagine that the Mensheviks had all along adhered
consistently to their Menshevik principles and had not fallen under the
influence of the revolutionary intoxication of the Bolsheviks, by taking part in
the November strike in St. Petersburg, the forcible introduction of the 8-hour
day and the boycott of the First Duma.” (Conclusion: the tactics of the
proletariat would have improved, but defeat would have followed just the same.)

Page 138:“Perhaps the revolutionary and oppositional [listen to this!]
parties in the stormy year of 1905 went too far in their expectations of’ a
radical break-up of the agrarian and political relations.”

Thatshould be enough, it seems? Liquidationism and renegacy repeated and
aggravated,Golos Sotsial-Demokratacalls a correction. Tomorrow a German translation ofThe Contemporary
Situationwill come out—the Golosists will publish a new repudiationfor the Germans—Cherevanin will publish a new “reservation”—the
liquidationist preaching will be intensified—Goloswill wax nobly
indignant at being slanderously accused of liquidationism. An old story, but
ever new.

Maslov,Martov and Potresov simply cannot understand, not for the life of them,
what was the “spirit” in the writings of Potresov that—at long
last!—caused even Plekhanov, a Marxist who had gone to such lengths in
manoeuvring round the Cadets, to flare up. So you don’t understand, my dear
Golosists? And after these quotations from Cherevanin’ s “corrected” book you
still don’t understand? How convenient it is sometimes to be dense!

{1}See present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 452-60.—Ed.

{2}For the article “\thinspace‘Golos Sotsial-Demokrata’ and
Cherevanin” Lenin used his remarks on Cherevanin’s bookThe
Contemporary Situation and the Possible Future, and especially the
“summary of important remarks” written by him on the cover at the end of
this book.